Latest news with #DawnCapital
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Collibra acquires data access startup Raito
Collibra, a data governance platform based in Brussels, is the latest enterprise to acquire a data company in order to expand its offerings in the age of AI. On Thursday, Collibra announced its acquisition Raito, a data access startup founded in 2021. Raito, also located in Brussels, helps companies manage which employees and customers have access to internal data. Collibra declined to comment on the terms of the deal. Raito previously raised $4 million in venture funding from investors, including Dawn Capital, Crane Venture Partners, and Collibra itself. Collibra founder and CEO Felix Van de Maele told TechCrunch that while managing data access is not a new problem for enterprises, it is becoming a bigger headache for data teams as more departments seek access for AI agents and workflow automation. "We heard from our customers and large organizations that managing data access at scale has become a really big problem," Van de Maele said. "That's why the traditional approaches just don't scale anymore. They're too brittle. They're manual workflows, [based on] static policies." Van de Maele added that Collibra already has a similar product, Collibra Protect, that touches on these access controls but is primarily focused on keeping data private. Raito's tech will help Collibra bolster and automate that offering. Raito isn't the only company focused on data access. Legacy enterprises like SailPoint and SecureAuth are just a few of the companies also offering data access tools. Van de Maele said buying Raito was the right choice for the company, as opposed to partnering with a legacy player, because Raito is cloud-native and built for the current AI moment. That Raito was founded by former Collibra employees didn't hurt either. "We also [were] looking for teams that want to continue to build, right? It's not the end for this," Van de Maele said. "It is just really the beginning of this journey." This is just the latest acquisition of a data company aimed at addressing a data governance void as companies look to shore up their stack to adapt to AI innovation. Last week, Salesforce announced its intent to acquire Informatica for the same reason. Earlier in May, both Alation and ServiceNow made similar acquisitions. Van de Maele added that advancements in AI have made people realize just how fragmented their data stacks have become, as many players had flooded the market over the last decade with single-point data solutions. "That fragmentation of governance . . .has really become a big problem, and so that's why we were excited to kind of acquire Raito and really make it part of Collibra, our unified governance platform for data and AI," Van de Maele said. Collibra was founded in 2008 as an early player to the data governance sector. The company has since raised nearly $600 million in venture capital from firms including Index Ventures, Sequoia and Tiger Global, among others. The company works with enterprises that include Heineken, Credit Suisse, and SAP. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
05-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Collibra acquires data access startup Raito
Collibra, a data governance platform based in Brussels, is the latest enterprise to acquire a data company in order to expand its offerings in the age of AI. On Thursday, Collibra announced its acquisition Raito, a data access startup founded in 2021. Raito, also located in Brussels, helps companies manage which employees and customers have access to internal data. Collibra declined to comment on the terms of the deal. Raito previously raised $4 million in venture funding from investors, including Dawn Capital, Crane Venture Partners, and Collibra itself. Collibra founder and CEO Felix Van de Maele told TechCrunch that while managing data access is not a new problem for enterprises, it is becoming a bigger headache for data teams as more departments seek access for AI agents and workflow automation. 'We heard from our customers and large organizations that managing data access at scale has become a really big problem,' Van de Maele said. 'That's why the traditional approaches just don't scale anymore. They're too brittle. They're manual workflows, [based on] static policies.' Van de Maele added that Collibra already has a similar product, Collibra Protect, that touches on these access controls but is primarily focused on keeping data private. Raito's tech will help Collibra bolster and automate that offering. Raito isn't the only company focused on data access. Legacy enterprises like SailPoint and SecureAuth are just a few of the companies also offering data access tools. Van de Maele said buying Raito was the right choice for the company, as opposed to partnering with a legacy player, because Raito is cloud-native and built for the current AI moment. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW That Raito was founded by former Collibra employees didn't hurt either. 'We also [were] looking for teams that want to continue to build, right? It's not the end for this,' Van de Maele said. 'It is just really the beginning of this journey.' This is just the latest acquisition of a data company aimed at addressing a data governance void as companies look to shore up their stack to adapt to AI innovation. Last week, Salesforce announced its intent to acquire Informatica for the same reason. Earlier in May, both Alation and ServiceNow made similar acquisitions. Van de Maele added that advancements in AI have made people realize just how fragmented their data stacks have become, as many players had flooded the market over the last decade with single-point data solutions. 'That fragmentation of governance . . .has really become a big problem, and so that's why we were excited to kind of acquire Raito and really make it part of Collibra, our unified governance platform for data and AI,' Van de Maele said. Collibra was founded in 2008 as an early player to the data governance sector. The company has since raised nearly $600 million in venture capital from firms including Index Ventures, Sequoia and Tiger Global, among others. The company works with enterprises that include Heineken, Credit Suisse, and SAP.
Business Insider
31-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
How AI startups are using hackathons to compete with Big Tech for talent
Hackathons bring together computer engineers to rapidly solve technical problems. Now, they are increasingly helping startups solve another problem: scouting AI talent. The event, which brings people together for around 24 to 72 hours to build a software product, gained traction in Silicon Valley in the 2000s and became a staple affair for Big Tech companies like Meta. But after the pandemic, hackathons were slow to get going again, said Bela Wiertz, founder of Tech: Europe, and organizer of multiple AI hackathons across the continent. That changed with the AI boom. Wiertz said that, since the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022, more research labs and AI startups have been arranging hackathons in cities with less "tech organization" in a bid to bring together top talent. And the events' talent-pulling power is making hackathons "a viable way for hot AI startups to compete with Big Tech for a top talent pool," Zoe Qin, vice president at Dawn Capital, told Business Insider. Big Tech companies typically have a major advantage over startups in the talent market: they can outspend them in recruitment and entice candidates with substantial compensation packages. Hackathons are one way for startups to level the playing field. "Startups cannot spend as much money on LinkedIn ads or copy what Big Tech do in terms of prestige, but they can show that they're more agile, and more approachable, that they're more committed during a hackathon," said Benjamin Wolba, the founder of European Defense Tech Hub, which organizes hackathons across the continent. In some cases, startups use hackathons to scout early-career talent that they might not reach during traditional hiring processes. Angelo Giacco, an Imperial College London and ETH Zurich graduate, participated in an AI hackathon organized by ElevenLabs in November. Two weeks later, he landed a job offer as an engineer at the AI startup. "I wouldn't even have considered applying if I hadn't gone to the hackathon," he told BI. "We're now hiring a few more people from hackathons, and we've launched one in seven different countries," he added. It's not just junior roles. Dawn Capital's Qin said that after some hackathons, she's seen some startups go after "high-performing candidates, or in the case of a hackathon run by a tech company itself, their engineers who have performed really well." Often, AI startups want entrepreneurial talent that's not rooted in a specific background, and recruiting from a hackathon allows these upstarts to find people "who want to tinker, build, and make things better — who may not necessarily match a classic profile of a computer scientist who wants to work in Big Tech," Qin added. While traditional AI research labs may not hire pure research talent from hackathons, it's useful for them to source solutions and customer-facing engineers who can build up the technology at the application layer. "For the foundation labs and all the infrastructure partners like Mistral and Eleven Labs, they're labs, but they're selling their technology as an infrastructure," said Wiertz. "So for them, yes, it's about hiring, but it's also the adoption of the technology in the ecosystem." Non-technical talent also has a shot Increasingly, more people from non-technical backgrounds are using AI coding assistants to vibe code and create technical products. That has lowered the barrier to entry for coding-related projects and broadened the talent pool that participates in hackathons. "University can be so theoretical, but hackathons help us to tackle real-life problems and get projects off the ground," said Franziska Harzheim, a venture scout at Flashpoint who has participated in multiple AI hackathons. With a degree in business analytics, Harzheim has still found a way to leverage her background to build an AI product with a team. "I feel like those hackathons are not about having a team of five super-experienced coders. It's more like we look at everyone's skill set, and according to that, we divide the tasks," she said. "If you're willing to learn something new on the spot, this is your space, it's amazing." They're also a valuable opportunity for companies to assess potential candidates from technical and non-technical backgrounds. "You get to see how people perform, whether they earn the food or are actually doing stuff in real life, not in an assessment center," European Defense Tech Hub's Wolba said. "You get to see them working on the inside — it could be very information dense, so it's a time-effective way to understand whether you want to work with this person."
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI self-hosting start-up Doubleword finds new Dawn with £9m funding boost
A British start-up which enables companies to 'self-host' their artificial intelligence functions will this week announce that it has raised nearly £10m in a round led by one of Europe's leading venture capital firms. Sky News understands that Doubleword - previously called TitanML - has secured the funding from Dawn Capital, a backer of successful technology companies including Mimecast and iZettle. Doubleword was set up to tackle what is known among tech experts as the 'inference problem', with AI becoming increasingly central to companies' interactions with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Money latest: Uber making big changes to how you pay Inference refers to the process of running live data through a trained AI model to make predictions or undertake tasks such as answering questions or generating images. Peter Kyle, the science, innovation and technology secretary, said in a statement: "AI will help us to deliver growth for our economy and new opportunities for people up and down the country, so it's vital businesses have the confidence to adopt and realise its potential. "Doubleword's work is helping set the standard for how companies can do exactly that - adopting AI quickly and efficiently so they can realise their ambitions and allow their workers and customers to thrive in the age of AI." ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Mr Kyle claimed: "This is yet another illustration not just of how British-born tech expertise is tapping into AI to help give businesses the world over a unique point of difference, but in the steps we've taken to make our tech sector a true global magnet for innovation and investment." The $12m (£9m) funding round will be announced on Thursday. Meryem Arik, co-Founder and chief executive of Doubleword, said: "Our customers want to build AI-powered applications-not AI infrastructure. "We eliminate the heavy lifting of inference at scale so they can go from idea to production faster, without racking up technical debt." ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement "We ensure that our customers can deploy any AI model with a single click, while always having the latest models and hardware supported - and without being wedded to a single model provider." The new capital will be used to grow Doubleword's workforce as it build partnerships with tech giants such as Snowflake and Nvidia. Doubleword's other backers include AI entrepreneurs such as Florian Douetteau, the chief executive of Dataiku, and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. "Enterprises creating specific business-critical AI would gladly self-host, if "expertise" and "cost" didn't sound like double trouble," Mr Douetteau said. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Read more from Sky News: China moves to ease tariff pain ahead of US trade war talks Plans to expand massive offshore windfarm under threat "Doubleword flips the script, making self-hosting effortless and reshaping the market for enterprise customers." Haakon Overli, general partner at Dawn Capital, described the company as "the most exciting start-up in this space". "They are scaling a product that businesses need at the right time, with the right expertise."
Sky News
07-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News
AI self-hosting start-up Doubleword finds new Dawn with £9m funding boost
A British start-up which enables companies to 'self-host' their artificial intelligence functions will this week announce that it has raised nearly £10m in a round led by one of Europe's leading venture capital firms. Sky News understands that Doubleword - previously called TitanML - has secured the funding from Dawn Capital, a backer of successful technology companies including Mimecast and iZettle. Doubleword was set up to tackle what is known among tech experts as the 'inference problem', with AI becoming increasingly central to companies' interactions with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. Inference refers to the process of running live data through a trained AI model to make predictions or undertake tasks such as answering questions or generating images. Peter Kyle, the science, innovation and technology secretary, said in a statement: "AI will help us to deliver growth for our economy and new opportunities for people up and down the country, so it's vital businesses have the confidence to adopt and realise its potential. "Doubleword's work is helping set the standard for how companies can do exactly that - adopting AI quickly and efficiently so they can realise their ambitions and allow their workers and customers to thrive in the age of AI." Mr Kyle claimed: "This is yet another illustration not just of how British-born tech expertise is tapping into AI to help give businesses the world over a unique point of difference, but in the steps we've taken to make our tech sector a true global magnet for innovation and investment." The $12m (£9m) funding round will be announced on Thursday. Meryem Arik, co-Founder and chief executive of Doubleword, said: "Ou customers want to build AI-powered applications-not AI infrastructure. "We eliminate the heavy lifting of inference at scale so they can go from idea to production faster, without racking up technical debt." "We ensure that our customers can deploy any AI model with a single click, while always having the latest models and hardware supported - and without being wedded to a single model provider." The new capital will be used to grow Doubleword's workforce as it build partnerships with tech giants such as Snowflake and Nvidia. Doubleword's other backers include AI entrepreneurs such as Florian Douettau, the chief executive of Dataiku, and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. "Enterprises creating specific business-critical AI would gladly self-host, if "expertise" and "cost" didn't sound like double trouble," Mr Douetteau said. "Doubleword flips the script, making self-hosting effortless and reshaping the market for enterprise customers." Haakon Overli, general partner at Dawn Capital, described the company as "the most exciting startup in this spac".
